Blade Runner, 12/20.

"The prevailing meme - that over time, scales fell from prejudicial eyes, and Blade Runner's true value as an extraordinary act of filmmaking bravado was recognized - is appealing, but also incomplete," writes Stephen Metcalf in Slate:

It may not have flattered the times, but in one sense Blade Runner benefited, and benefited enormously, from them. Blade Runner is among the first movies - if not the first - whose fortunes revived in the new channels of "ancillary distribution." This is no accident. The movie's unalloyed virtue, admired even at the time of its release, is an assaultive and wildly original production design, a mix of that rain, nuzzling gouts of smoke, and an eternally shifting kaleidoscope of artificial lights - all of it suggestive of a richly dystopic society and a wretchedly fatigued planet Earth. If nothing else, Blade Runner is mesmerizing when caught in pieces; it murmurs beautifully in the background. Unloved on the big screen, Blade Runner found its perfect medium in VCRs and cable TV - in the fragmented, ambient multiplatform afterlife that has become, over the past 20 or so years, the common stuff of movies.

"Last Thursday I caught the last local theatrical screening of Blade Runner: The Final Cut and it took my breath away," writes Peter Martin at Cinematical. "As much as Blade Runner's graphic schemes have been appropriated by and influenced others, the original maintains a great deal of authentic power, a bold mix of past, present and future."

Online listening tip. Ridley Scott is a guest on Fresh Air.

Posted by dwhudson at December 20, 2007 3:23 PM